The deadliest migration route in the world has swallowed up another boat. Forty-one people, including three children, are missing in the Mediterranean after a shipwreck. The boat left Thursday from Sfax in Tunisia with 45 migrants on board, the UN announced on Wednesday based on the testimonies of four survivors.
The United Nations agencies for refugees (UNHCR), children (UNICEF) and migration (IOM) deplore in a joint press release this “terrible shipwreck which occurred between Thursday 3 and Friday 4 August in the Mediterranean”. “The iron boat would have turned around” in the face of “weather conditions making crossings on these small iron boats unsuitable for sailing very dangerous”, according to the press release.
Four survivors were rescued
“This demonstrates the absolute lack of scruples of traffickers who, in this way, expose migrants and refugees to very high risks of death at sea”, denounced the three agencies. According to figures compiled by the United Nations, more than 1,800 people have already died since January in shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean. That’s more than double last year.
After drifting for days, the four survivors – a 13-year-old unaccompanied minor, a woman and two men – were finally rescued by a merchant ship on Tuesday and disembarked on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, located between Tunisia and Sicily has become, because of this location, the preferred gateway for migrants going to Europe.
Frontex alarm
In good health, the four survivors, from Guinea and Ivory Coast, said they survived by floating on inner tubes, according to the Italian Red Cross, which runs the migrant reception center in Lampedusa.
Frontex, the EU border agency, said one of its planes had spotted “a metal boat with four people on board” in waters under Libyan jurisdiction on Tuesday morning. The boat being “adrift”, Frontex raised the alarm and the four passengers were rescued by a merchant ship and then handed over to an Italian coastguard boat.
Fifteen passengers were wearing life jackets
According to the survivors, the seven-meter-long metal boat overturned due to a large wave, throwing all its passengers overboard. Only 15 of them had life jackets but they still probably drowned.
Faced with this umpteenth tragedy, the three UN agencies “reaffirm the need for coordinated search and rescue mechanisms and continue to ask States to increase resources and capacities to effectively meet their responsibilities”.
The terrible tip of the iceberg
“The sea is very rough (…) Embarking migrants by this sea is really criminal. The traffickers are really unscrupulous”, denounced Wednesday the press officer of the IOM in Italy, Flavio Di Giacomo. “The iron boats that are used are the most fragile I have ever seen in the central Mediterranean,” he observed.
But “sub-Saharan migrants are forced to use these low-cost iron boats which break after 20-30 hours of navigation”. “With these conditions at sea, this type of boat capsizes easily,” he said. Therefore, “it is very likely that there will be many more shipwrecks than those we know of, that is my real fear”, concluded Flavio Di Giacomo.